Smart Eye has attracted a lot of interest in this forum, but it is by no means Sweden’s only top name in eye-tracking. Another listed company, Tobii, is at the forefront of the field in other technology applications.
Tobii’s Dynavox is the market leader in eye-controlled communication devices for ALS, cerebral palsy (CP), spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis (MS) and brain injury patients. Dynavox produces devices, software and the widely used PCS symbol language for this purpose.
On the B-2-B side, Tobii offers Tobii Pro products for scientific research and market research. For example, advertisers study where the consumer’s gaze falls.
The Tobii Tech segment, in turn, licenses technology to various consumer electronics manufacturers, for example for VR and gaming devices.
In terms of revenue, Tobii has already grown to over 150 million euros.
A few recent highlights
Tobii was selected as the technology supplier for HP’s new VR device:
Google integrates the PCS language developed by Tobii into its own system. This practically makes PCS an industry standard.
Dynavox represents a direction in which eye-tracking has long had commercial applications, but growth is expected to come primarily from new applications in gaming and VR devices. Revenue is expected to be around 12% in 2021 and accelerate to 18% in the following year (2022). With 2021 consensus estimates, EV/sales 3.81x and EV/EBITDA 30.7x.
The share price at the time of writing is 57.5 SEK
What’s interesting to me in this case is if Tobii makes most of its revenue elsewhere than in the automotive market, which is Smart Eye’s main area at the moment. A diversified market is better for all players. More market to share and win. A broader product family also diversifies companies’ demand risks and ensures more certain business continuity.
Doesn’t that 2019 revenue of SEK 1,500 million convert to about 150 million euros, not 500 million? The annual report is below. (For a moment, I was happy, thinking this is a big market if Tobii is already at half a billion )
On MarketScreener, 1 analyst follows, PE forecasts below. It’s a shame that the forecast doesn’t extend to 2023. If/when earnings scale well, PE2023e might already become more moderate.
Thanks for the correction. The turnover in euros is indeed about 150 million. There was a typo in the opening post at that point. I’ll see if I can still edit it out.
Interesting company. One could assume that in the long run, niche companies in eye-tracking technology will merge and develop the field and products more comprehensively. If Smart Eye breaks through as forecasts promise, its rapidly growing earnings and company value could enable acquisitions.
Microsoft announced today that it has sold AR devices based on its Hololens 2 product to the US Army. The deal is worth approximately 22 billion over ten years.
This news also pushed Tobii’s stock up over 7% today. The news at least confirms that the AR and VR product market is starting to break through. It is also possible that Hololens 2 directly utilizes Tobii’s technology.
In the Q4 2019 presentation, Hololens 2 is mentioned as an example, but the presentation leaves it open whether it uses Tobii’s technology. “most of [the examples] but not all with Tobii eye tracking”
Soon everyone will be making DMS (Driver Monitoring System) devices. I dropped Tobii from my watch list in 2019, I need to look into it again. @timontti could dig into whether a new challenger to Smart is emerging from home turf
Discussion about Tobii has been very quiet. What are your thoughts on the Tobii Dynavox spin-off? There’s time until June 3rd to buy into Tobii to get the Dynavox shares included in the deal. Traditionally, after a demerger, the sum of the parts is > 1, how would it be in this case?
A few scattered thoughts that came to my mind:
Traditionally, the assistive technology side (Dynavox) has brought in Tobii’s money, and Tech has lost it.
How well is Smartbox doing these days, are they a challenger to Dynavox? Smart Eye supplies them with technology after Tobii had to cancel the acquisition…
It’s difficult to estimate the future pricing of the parts. Will tech investors dump Dynavox cheaply on December 9th? Or will the opposite happen? → Bottom fishing lines in the water
Dynavox might interest completely different investor groups than the Tech side’s gaming and hype-VR.
Smart Eye, with Affectiva and iMotions, is making inroads into Tobii Pro’s territory, so it won’t be easier times there either.
Or is this just a new sleight of hand by which Eskilsson is kicking the can down the road again?
In that case, the new Tobii Dynavox shares will appear in the portfolio in addition to the previous Tobii shares, and trading with them will be possible starting tomorrow, December 9th. More details on this matter have been provided in the previously linked press release.
Tobii has surpassed one million vehicles equipped with the company’s interior sensing solutions, including both driver monitoring systems (DMS) and occupant monitoring systems (OMS).
12/2024: ~ 550,000 vehicles reported to be on the road
12/2025: ~ 830,000 units
And now 3/2026: over a million.
The pace seems to be accelerating even before the new EU law regarding the mandatory requirement of DMS systems for new cars comes into effect in July 2026.
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